Saturday, February 6, 2016

A reputed Chicago mobster was sentenced Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in
federal prison for a series of extortion plots involving a team of
bone-cracking goons who traveled the country to confront deadbeat
businessmen.
In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge
Sharon Johnson Coleman told Paul Carparelli it was clear from the
hundreds of hours of undercover recordings captured by the FBI that Carparelli "took pleasure in the fear and discomfort of others."
"These are crimes of violence, sir, not just of poor
decision-making," Coleman said as Carparelli stood before the bench in
an orange jail jumpsuit and shackled at the ankles. "The public safety
is at risk."
The judge's sentence, however, was far below the more
than 11 years originally sought by prosecutors, who argued that
Carparelli was looking to rise in the ranks of the Outfit and become a
"made" man after several bosses of the Cicero faction went to prison.In court Wednesday, Carparelli, 47, choked up as he
apologized for his actions. He asked the judge for a moment to compose
himself as he talked about embarrassing his young son. Carparelli said
he's come to realize since his arrest in 2013 that he has "anger issues"
and often can't control thoughts that "go straight from my brain to my
mouth."
"Sometimes it seems like the anger wells up inside me," he said. "In short, my big mouth gets me into trouble."
With credit for the time he has already served in custody, Carparelli could be released in about two years.

From
2011 to 2013, the government recorded dozens of conversations between
Paul Carparelli and his top enforcer, George Brown, as they spoke about
mob-related activities including extortion, contract beatings, and debt
collections. Carparelli was sentenced Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, to 3 1/2
years in prison. (Warning graphic language.)

Assistant
U.S. Attorney Heather McShain played excerpts in court from several
conversations Carparelli held with his key enforcer, George Brown, a
300-pound union bodyguard and mixed martial arts fighter who was
secretly cooperating with the FBI.
In one meeting, Carparelli
could be heard laughing as Brown described a beating he purportedly
administered at Carparelli's behest. In fact, the beating never took
place because Brown was already working undercover for the government.
"They said they really did a number on his ribs," Brown said on the recording. "They are guaranteeing me that something broke."
"Good," Carparelli replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
Carparelli pleaded guilty last year to five counts stemming from a series of extortion attempts involving deadbeat businessmen.
In
one case, Carparelli played a behind-the-scenes role in a plot to
confront a business owner in Appleton, Wis., about a $100,000 debt. In a
backroom at a Fuddruckers restaurant, Brown and two other mob toughs
threatened the owner, who had offered to hand over a special-edition
Ford Mustang as partial payment.

Asked
where the car could be found, the victim was "shaking and stuttering"
so badly that one of the enforcers grabbed his driver's license and
wrote the address down himself, prosecutors said. At a 2014 trial in
Chicago, the victim had trouble reading the complaint he had filed with
police, telling jurors he was still shaking when he filled it out and
that his handwriting was almost illegible.

In addition to the
extortion plots, Carparelli was caught on surveillance arranging for the
beating of suburban car dealership owner R.J. Serpico — he wanted both
his legs broken — for failing to pay back a $300,000 loan from Michael
"Mickey" Davis, a longtime partner of reputed mob lieutenant Salvatore
"Solly D" DeLaurentis.
At the center of the case were hundreds of
hours of conversations between Carparelli and Brown that paint a
colorful picture of Carparelli as a callous midlevel mob operative
looking to move up the chain of command.
"This position doesn't
happen all the time, George," Carparelli told Brown in a recorded call
from 2011. "This is like a once-in-a-lifetime (expletive) thing, if this
is what you want to do, if this is the way you want to live your life."
Carparelli's
lawyers asked Coleman for as little as probation, saying in a recent
court filing that the former pizzeria owner was "nothing but a blowhard"
whose constant exaggerations of his mob ties "caused the government to
believe he was a connected guy."
"Mr. Carparelli is clearly a
'wannabe' who has watched 'The Sopranos' and 'Goodfellas' too many
times," attorneys Ed Wanderling and Charles Nesbit wrote. He was simply
playing a "role," they argued.